Concert/symposium at Wash U. Feb. 16 & 17
By Roscoe Crenshaw
For the St. Louis American
I first learned of “Music and Musicians in the Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis,” a two- day tribute to be conducted at various sites on the Washington University campus, during a telephone conversation from Vermont several weeks ago with multi-reedman J.D. Parran. Parran provided a wealth of information about pre-BAG and BAG history.
Benjamin Looker, author of “Point from which creation begins”: The Black Artists’ Group of St. Louis,” calls Parran, an original BAG member, “a New York-based reed specialist and composer known particularly for his use of the seldom-heard alto clarinet and bass saxophone.” Parran performed and taught with BAG while a student at Webster College and Washington University, where he earned a master’s of arts in music education.
Parran’s dad started him on saxophone at age 11, teaching him to play and to breathe. He also studied with Herman Morgan at Cupples School and Walter Harris, who was in residence at Christ Southern Mission Baptist Church. Another profound influence was reedman/educator O’Hara Spearman, who advised J.D. to double on saxophone and clarinet. The rationale was that, in the ‘60s, the only college with a jazz curriculum was Berklee (Boston, MA), where it was almost impossible to major in saxophone alone. As for the late “He helped everybody,” Parran almost tearfully recalls of Spearman. “He gave, gave, gave to the community.”
At age 14, one of Parran’s most profound encounters was with pianist/trumpeter David Hines and the Continentals, which included Harold Wheeler (later an acclaimed Broadway composer), Edwin Salter (writer, promoter and pharmacist) and Charles Scales, a multi-instrumentalist who, as Lester Bowie once informed me, got a full-ride scholarship to the University of Missouri-Columbia during the abjectly segregationist 1950s.
Another significant association was with trumpeter Jerome Snipes and his orchestra (which included baritone saxman Jabbo Ware and trombonist and former Normandy High band director, Robert “Happy Tooth” Edwards). Jerome “organized the cats” into the Junior Vagabonds social club, and Walter Lathan (then business manager of the George Hudson Orchestra) got them started in zazz at the Sarah-Page Y.
Meanwhile, Harry Wynn, an authentic swing era saxophonist and Jabbo’s teacher, shared his “suitcase full of stock jazz arrangements” and had Jabbo write in manuscript daily, an invaluable exercise. Educator Vernon Nashville provided a book of written jazz music, featuring modern big band writers and St. Louisans like saxophonist Ernie Wilkins and trumpeter Clark Terry. “Sometimes,” J.D. says, “he would have drummer Sonny Hamp come over and demonstrate at Local 197 (the union hall) on Delmar.”
A 15 year-old J.D. observed what he considers a very important phenomenon: future soul vocalist and arranger Donny Hathaway performing the Edvard Grieg “Concierto in A Minor” at Vashon High School on solo piano. “All these white people came down to Vashon High School,” he said. This was in a period of intense segregation, when no black people were being taught by symphony musicians.
After transferred to Sumner High School, he met Paul Overbey, who helped him immensely. He played first clarinet, performing all the solos in the band and prepared audition tapes for college. No high school but Sumner offered a music theory class, and they sent students to Washington University for theory classes on Saturday. Choir director Kenneth Billups, the first music theory teacher at Sumner, taught him. “When I got to college,” Parran says, “I didn’t have to worry about theory.”
Other mentors were Les Scott at Webster College and Louis Hilton at Washington University.
After relocating to New York in 1971, he accepted a Danforth Fellowship (in anthropology) at the New School for Social Research, which culminated in studies in Nigeria at the University of Ibadan and musical research at the University of Ile-Ife. Parran credits BAG co-founder, Hamiet Bluiett, with referring him to saxophonist George Coleman, recalling, “He knew I needed to study the jazz tradition,” and to baritone saxophone and tuba player Howard Johnson, who got him his first gigs in New York.
J.D. has worked with St. Louis’ Human Arts Ensemble, 3rd Circuit n’ Spirit with trumpeter Floyd LeFlore, trumpeter Baikida Carroll, drummer Jerome “Scrooge” Harris, poets Shirley LeFlore and Michael Castro and Chinese gong player Rashu Aten. He also has worked with clarinetist Don Byron; reedman Julius Hemphill; improvisers and composers such as Anthony Braxton, Douglas Ewart, Derek Bailey and Anthony Davis; as well as pop stars Stevie Wonder and John Lennon.
In 1997, his first CD as a leader, J.D. Parran & Spirit Stage, was released on Jabbo Ware’s Y’All of New York label. In 2004, he appeared with Amiri Baraka and Steve Colson in Paris and has been gigging recently with Cecil Taylor’s big band at Iridium in New York.
J.D. Parran will perform on Thursday, February 16 with Shirley LeFLore at 4 p.m. at Alumni House, Washington University (off Forsyth Blvd. At Wallace Circle) and at 9:15 p.m. at Holmes Lounge, Ridgley Hall, on Washington University’s Brookings Quadrangle. These events are free and open to the public.
